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Lucy Goode Brooks (1818–1900)

Lucy Goode Brooks played the primary
role in establishing the Friends' Asylum for Colored Orphans, an orphanage for African American children in Richmond, after the American Civil War (1861–1865). Born into slavery, she married Albert Royal Brooks, whose master allowed him to operate a livery stable
and eating house. Although
he eventually purchased his
freedom and that of Lucy Brooks and several of their children, one daughter was
sold by her owner to bondage in
Tennessee. After Emancipation
former slaves flocked to Richmond to look for missing family members. Having lost one of
her own children to the slave
trade, Lucy Brooks had a special concern for the plight of parentless children.
She worked with the Ladies Sewing Circle for Charitable Work, a local Society of Friends
meeting, and several black
churches to create an orphanage. In March 1872 the General Assembly incorporated
the Friends' Asylum for Colored Orphans, which remained in operation for almost sixty
years. Brooks died in Richmond in 1900. MORE...

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Early Years

Brooks was born probably in or near Richmond, the daughter of Judith Goode, a slave,
and an unidentified white
man. Her nephew John Henry
Smyth became the United States minister to Liberia. On November 11, 1838, Lucy
Goode became a member of the First Baptist Church of Richmond, and she joined other
blacks in forming the First African Baptist Church when that congregation split from its
parent in 1841.

Late in the 1830s Lucy Goode met Albert Royal
Brooks, another Richmond slave. Goode had learned to read, perhaps from listening to
the lessons taught to her master's children. As she and Albert Brooks fell in love, she
passed her reading skills on to him, and they conspired to write the passes that enabled him to court her. When
Goode's master died in 1838, she became the property of a man named Sublett. Her new
master not only consented to her marriage on February 2, 1839, but also agreed that she
could live with her husband, whose own master allowed him to operate a livery stable and
eating house in return for regular payments. Brooks was permitted to keep his leftover
earnings and used them eventually to purchase his freedom. The Brookses had at least
five sons and four daughters, but one boy and one girl died in childhood. One son, Robert Peel Brooks, became a
leader of the postwar Republican
Party and was one of the first black lawyers to practice in Richmond.

Lucy Brooks's master died by 1858, when his heirs sold her and her three youngest
children to Daniel Von Groning, a local tobacco merchant known to Albert Brooks. Von
Groning permitted them to live with their husband and father, and Albert Brooks agreed
to pay him in installments for their freedom. Lucy Brooks then set out for Richmond's
business district to find buyers for her eldest daughter and the three eldest boys,
walking along Main Street with her younger children in tow. Three local men bought her
sons and agreed to allow them to live at the Brooks home so long as the youngsters came
to work in the tobacco factories each day. A fourth buyer purchased her daughter and
promised not to sell her away but broke his pledge. Aged eighteen, literate, and the
subject of a photographic portrait that reveals a self-possessed, promising young woman,
Margaret Ann Brooks was sold off to slavery in Tennessee, where she died in 1862. The
betrayal pained her parents for the rest of their lives, but their brave efforts saved
their other children from that fate.

Albert Brooks was one of Richmond's most successful antebellum black entrepreneurs, but
to buy his wife and three youngest surviving children from Von Groning took four years.
The deed of
manumission was dated October 21, 1862. The older boys did not become free until
the Union army occupied Richmond on
April 3, 1865. Walter Henderson
Brooks, later a prominent Baptist minister in Washington, D.C., recalled the
care his parents took to keep him and his siblings from realizing that they were slaves
subject to being sold away from home.

Orphanage

After Emancipation former slaves flocked to Richmond to seek better opportunities and
look for missing family members. Lucy Brooks noted some children were separated from
their parents and abandoned by former masters. Having lost one of her own children to
the slave trade, she had a special concern for the plight of parentless children. Brooks
convinced the Ladies Sewing Circle for Charitable Work, of which she was a leader, that
a home for orphans was a worthy project. She then obtained support for an orphanage from
the local Cedar Creek Meeting of the Society of Friends. Brooks had probably already won
the backing of several black churches, whose representatives were included in the plans
that the Quaker leaders devised for governance of the orphanage.

On April 12, 1867, the Richmond city council deeded
a lot to the organization, and the orphanage building was completed in 1871. The General
Assembly incorporated the Friends' Asylum for Colored Orphans in March 1872. Seventeen
years later the white trustees turned the institution over to representatives of
Richmond's black Baptist churches. The orphanage operated until 1932, when the
organization became a child-placement agency working primarily with foster families. The
building that housed the orphanage was razed in 1969. Today, the renamed Friends'
Association for Children operates a family center and a playground. The Lucy Brooks
Foundation, created in 1984 to raise funds for the association, was named in honor of
its founder.

The number of Richmond children whose lives Brooks touched cannot be known, but the
long life of the institution she founded to aid children without families is proof of
the great need for such work. Her own children's accomplishments can be traced to her
teachings and the example she set, not least her courageous struggle to preserve her
family during slavery. Albert Royal Brooks died on July 15, 1881. Lucy Goode Brooks died
at her home on October 7, 1900, and was buried in Union Mechanics Cemetery, one of the
Barton Heights cemeteries in Richmond.

Time Line

September 13, 1818
- Lucy Goode is born probably in or near Richmond, the daughter of Judith Goode, a slave, and an unidentified white man.

1838
- Lucy Goode's master dies, and she becomes the property of a man named Sublett.

November 11, 1838
- Lucy Goode becomes a member of the First Baptist Church of Richmond.

February 2, 1839
- Albert R. Brooks marries Lucy Goode. They will have at least five sons and four daughters, of whom four sons and three daughters will survive early childhood.

October 29, 1853
- Robert P. Brooks is born into slavery in Richmond, the sixth of at least nine children of Albert R. Brooks and Lucy Goode Brooks.

1858
- Lucy Goode Brooks's master dies. To ensure that the family is not dispersed, she finds local buyers for her four eldest children. Her husband, Albert R. Brooks, successfully convinces a tobacco merchant to buy Lucy Goode Brooks and their remaining children.

1862
- Margaret A. Brooks, the eldest daughter of Albert R. Brooks and Lucy Goode Brooks, dies in Tennessee. She was separated from her family in 1858, when her master, who had promised her mother he would not sell her away, sold her into slavery in Tennessee.

October 21, 1862
- Following the receipt of $800 from Albert Brooks, Daniel Von Groning, a tobacco merchant and diplomat, frees Lucy Goode Brooks and her young children, including Robert Peel Brooks.

April 3, 1865
- The U.S. Army enters Richmond, and the remaining children of Lucy Goode Brooks and Albert R. Brooks become free.

April 12, 1867
- The Richmond city council deeds a lot to the Cedar Creek Meeting of the Society of Friends.

1871
- The building for the Friends' Asylum for Colored Orphans is finished.

March 1872
- The General Assembly incorporates the Friends' Asylum for Colored Orphans.

July 15, 1881
- Albert R. Brooks dies at his home. He is probably buried in Union Mechanics Cemetery in Richmond.

October 10, 1882
- After a month's struggle with tuberculosis and typhoid fever, Robert Peel Brooks dies at his mother's home in Richmond. He is buried in Richmond's Union Mechanics Cemetery.

October 7, 1900
- Lucy Goode Brooks dies at her home in Richmond. She is buried in Union Mechanics Cemetery.

1984
- The Lucy Brooks Foundation is created to raise funds for the Friends' Association for Children, which operates a family center and playground in Richmond.